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Monday, November 21, 2011

Scientific integrity

Scientific integrity

That a society
trusts its scientific community to be truthful in all its manifestations is a
given in any civilised society. We are all aware of scandals involving
sometimes young and sometimes prominent scientists being disgraced for having
falsified scientific data in peer-reviewed scientific publications in scholarly
journals. That is the newsworthy end of this thorny issue but beneath that
headline-catching level lie some equally challenging issues of scientific
integrity. The first of these relates to the belief of many MEPs that
scientific advisers to the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) should be, as
George Smiley, would have said “Persil grade”, clean as the driven snow with no
links to the food industry.That
pressure has led to several high level confrontations between EFSA and the
European Parliament plus a plethora of NGOs in the food area. Now an expert in
the biology of the lactating yak is unlikely to be considered as a likely
expert for a panel of EFSA but someone with a life’s investment in public
health nutrition research is likely to be very attractive. The problem is that
the lactating yak expert attracts zero interest from the food industry while
the lifetime devotee to public health nutrition cannot be free from food
industry links. If their research is world class, everyone will want to talk
with them, pay their travel to give talks, co- fund or fund their research and
generally get to know such an expert. And if the EU, through its competitive
research programme funds this expert, then for sure, there must be industry
links because that is an absolute requirement of funding. So the MEPs cannot
have it both ways. If they want the best, they will have to accept that both
the regulator and the regulated will visit the best.

Having a link
with the food industry appears to suggest to MEPs that there is a higher
likelihood that independent scientific thinking is likely to be compromised.
However, this does not appear to apply to NGOs. A scientist who is an active
member of an environmental NGO could be compromised if he or she were to be a
member of an advisory committee of an EU institution if the topic involved GM
foods. And would a strict vegan be a truly independent chair of an expert group
on some nutrient, which has a strong line with animal based foods like iron or
zinc? The simple solution here is to require that such potential conflicts of
interest be declared so that anyone reading a report involving such individuals
knows the background of the experts. But that doesn’t count for much with MEPs.
NGOs are inherently good whether they be environmental NGOs or vegan NGOs. It
is only industry that seems to matter to the guardians of scientific integrity.
Seems strange to me!

Finally, we
burrow down to what is ultimately the most sinister aspect of scientific
integrity, namely being honest in interpreting primary (my discovery) or
secondary (your discovery) data. In a very important paper published in the
International Journal of Obesity {2009-(1-50}, researchers at the University Of
Alabama reported a study in which they tracked the manner in which primary data
(my discovery for example) is cited in secondary data (your reported discovery
citing my original findings in support). They chose a study, which examined the
link between the development of obesity and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs).
The original primary data showed no statistically significant association
between SSB intake and obesity. Often, authors of papers, which report
“negative” data, grasp at straws of positivity. In this case, a subset analysis
showed a suggestion of such a link. However, the subset analysis was always a
sideshow while the main event, the true objective of the study, showed zilch
evidence linking SSBs and obesity. They then tracked all the studies published
in English that cited the paper. Of these, 84% inaccurately reported the
primary data. That is, they chose to ignore the main and “true” conclusion of
the paper and chose instead to focus on the sideshow, the non-intended analysis,
which did suggest that in some sub-groups there was a possible link between SSBs
and obesity. This is a minor snapshot of a paper that shows a massive
systematic bias of researchers toward that interpretation of data, which suits
their agenda.

Just about
everybody reading this will recognise this bias in all spheres of human
activity. However, for science, which purports to be built on the truth, this
is a major problem. If scientists, select from here and there to suit their
agenda, the “sayonara” objectivity.

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"Ever seen a fat fox ~ Human obesity explored"

About Me

I graduated from University College Dublin in 1971 with an Masters in Agricultural Chemistry, took a PhD at Sydney University in 1976 and joined the University of Southampton Medical School as a lecturer in human nutrition in 1977. In 1984 I returned to Ireland to take up a post at the Department of Clinical Medicine Trinity College Dublin and was appointed as professor of human nutrition. In 2006 I left Trinity and moved to University College Dublin as Director of the UCD Institute of Food and Health. I am a former President of the Nutrition Society and I've served on several EU and UN committees on nutrition and Health. I have published over 350+ peer reviewed scientific papers in Public Health Nutrition and Molecular Nutrition and am principal investigator on several national and EU projects (www.ucd.ie/jingo; www.food4me.org). My popular books are "Something to chew on ~ challenging controversies in human nutrition" and "Ever seen a fat fox: human obesity explored"